Will There Also Be Singing
, Pauletta Hansel's tenth collection,
contains poems of witness and protest. Poems include those written in the voices of those living and working in Hansel's native Appalachia, as well as those exploring this nation's current racial, political and class injustices and divisions. The poet speaks to her own culpability and complicated grief about a land she loves and for whose future she fears.
"Pauletta Hansel's Will There Also Be Singing? could be subtitled 'Found Poems, Centos, and Other Songs Woven from the World Around Us.' In this collection of poems, the former (and first) Poet Laureate of Cincinnati writes a poetry of witness about her native Appalachia and her country as a whole that is also a master class on how to work with collage. Much like Kentucky artist Robert Morgan, whose sculptures are made from an accretion of found objects, Hansel takes news clippings and historical essays, poems, and social media posts and places them next to each other and layers them on top of each other until a poem emerges."
-Jeremy Paden, Professor of Spanish, Chair, Humanities Division, Transylvania University, and author of
World As Sacred Burning Heart